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Riot, all this mess about incoming Sona nerfs is a proof of reverse power creep.

I think its important to remember that we the sheeple (including the pros) will always choose 3 or 4 "top" champions in each role as favorites despite there being more viable options at any given time.

Here are done champions that carry games harder than actual carries: Alistar, taric, soraka, leona, lulu. Supports are not useless. nor are they weak. You are saying strength is in damage, when this is precisely what riot has been trying to convince people about. Strength is not measured in damage. Just because a supports damage gets lowered does not make her useless.

All of them and some more have the potential to be really good support champs.
But they are not good as the others.

On the other side we have actually only Tristana.
Varus nad Draven are strong if played right (Aphro). They may not be the bet picks for a WC, but they are strong enough to be used in normal tournaments.
Ashe is situational and counters some comps.
All others were used in the WC more than once.

none of those supports are really viable though nor are they built to be supports they are fun and you can easily win a lane or game with them but you are at a disadvantage by picking one of those. On the other hand some ap carries are viable as supports succh as lux or zyra and that imo has mostly to do with the general nerfing of supports. First they nerfed sustain overall which slightly hit lifesteal but majorly hit on all healing abilities. but then on top of that they have been nerfing all support poke which makes soraka/janna/sona(<-- obviously they havent gotten to her yet) thus support champs with burst potential are becoming the way to go.

on the other hand nearly every adc is viable due to the nature of an adc and by viable i mean they arent severely outclassed by other options where as support gp, yorick, maokai and syndra are all severely outclassed by other supports who have their cc and damage potential + sustain or they have much better cc potential + tankyness or w.e it may be.

My problem is that a justification for her nerf is that she's elbowing out other supports like Janna and Soraka. Well duh; look at what those two have been through this year. Lulu I dunno; I feel like she's all right and somewhat underplayed. The only nerfs she got didn't affect her support role.

Instead of nerfing Sona (again), wouldn't it be better to revert some of the unnecessary nerfs on the other supports? Otherwise, Janna, etc. will just get nerfed when Sona drops below them ... and then a few more nerfs ... and then Sona again ... and nerf and nerf and nerf ... and everyone will just go full AP mids as bot lane supports because at least they're not trash.

So I guess stop making trash. At least make Janna's AD buff separate from her shield again FFS ...

I just wish you'd leave the Mage part of Mage/Support characters intact.

Galio is a Mage/Tank who can function well building primarily AP items or defensive items, however it feels like Mage/Supports have gotten the Mage hammered out of them with repeated nerfs.

This is what I've been wondering about.

Take Janna, for instance. I always felt she was an odd and underutilized but still useful pick as an AP Mid instead of support, but she's had her AP ratios constantly nerfed into the ground until it became hard for her to fill that role at all - something that doesn't even affect her support side, since support doesn't build much AP.

I'm half expecting the Karma remake to completely destroy her usability as an AP Mid and peg her as support only.

This is a red herring. The power level across the board, generally, is up - we constantly add total power to the game. There's zero evidence of a progression of reverse power creep - in fact, our game is power-creeping a little.

For other classes, yes this is true. But looking at the patch history for support champions I have to disagree with you for supports. Seriously, go look through the patch histories of support champions and try and tell me they're power creeping. Taric is the only one I could even begin to argue has gotten stronger, ALL of the others have been majorly nerfed over the past year and a half or so.

It's almost like champions are dealt with in a vacuum. You compare them to others who fill similar roles, but even then the comparison is highly debatable on account of the fact that they are different champions. So champs are seemingly nerfed and (rarely) buffed because of their apparent individual power, rather than how they are in a comp.

Besides, "support" champions have utility- based kits which are notoriously hard to balance because they are constructed to cause imbalance. Why is there this driving need to balance that which is inherently, designedly asymmetric?

This is a red herring. The power level across the board, generally, is up - we constantly add total power to the game. There's zero evidence of a progression of reverse power creep - in fact, our game is power-creeping a little.
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This is probably true of other lanes, but how has there been any power creep for supports? Recently it's been almost all major nerfs for traditional supports. Soraka probably had the biggest nerfs of them all. Then Sona, Lulu, and Janna got nerfed rather hard. Sona has been buffed slightly and given some QOL AFTER major nerfs, but to be honest she has had very little major power gain. Also Ali had some major nerfs due to popularity as both jungle and support. Basically the only people left alone are leona, blitz and taric. However I don't see anyone getting any major buffs that is a support at all in the last year or so.

What I will say is, if we do push supports out, we'll get them back in - just like we did with Sona. We'll just be faster next time Out goal is not to push them out, but it's also not OK to have only Sona/Janna/Soraka used (this was literally six weeks ago in NA finals). If Sona is pushing out Lulu, Janna, and Soraka, that's as much of a problem as if it Leona or Blitz were doing it.

With regards to our perspective on matters:

The issue, from our end, appears to be not that Sona is pushing Janna or Soraka out, but that she's filling the gap those two left when they were pushed out by their nerfs. Sona isn't picked over Janna and Soraka because she's so much stronger than them but because they're so much weaker than they need to be.

Soraka used to be a good choice because she'd help you dominate the lane, but she doesn't do that anymore. Against a Blitz or Alistar lane, she's going to die repeatedly and not being to keep the enemy jungler off her carry. Even Leona and Taric are rough lanes for Soraka. She's ok against Janna and Sona, but even then she doesn't offer overwhelming power, especially if the enemy jungler ganks ever. Then you get to teamfights and Soraka is much less useful.

Janna can kinda still do her c***blocking thing but she's insanely vulnerable when her spells are on cooldown. Honestly, though, the big reason I think she's underplayed is because you started nerfing her CC to the point where she's unsatisfying to play these days.

Lulu isn't especially strong against any kind of bot lane, but she can hold her own against any kind as well (though Ali/Blitz lanes are really rough). She can do a bit of everything and consequently doesn't have as many sharp edges. She's in the unique position of being a teamfighting support, stronger later than early. My wish list for her starts and ends with a base movement speed buff of 5 or 10 since currently her mobility is piss-poor until she gets boots 1 (self-W isn't enough since she needs it for the disable in lane).

Sona is decent against Taric lanes in spite of his heals, stun, and armor buff, but she's terribad when facing Alistar or Blitzcrank, and even Leona lanes can be rough for her. Fortunately, Alistar and Blitzcrank are permabanned while Leona at least has the grace to deal no damage and still be reasonably killable.

Here's the real problem with support balance: while you can buff or nerf an AP carry's ratios or base damages or even their CC and they'll compensate by building differently, supports rely solely on their abilities and they don't have enough gold to counterbuild very effectively. If you're up against a LeBlanc mid, you buy an early Negatron cloak and maybe even Merc Treads. If you're up against a Riven top, Nina Tabi are your best friend even if you plan on selling them for different boots later. What is Soraka supposed to do when that Blitz/Ezreal wombo combo can walk into the minions, knock her carry up, and then grab him when he tries to run? She can heal him, but she doesn't have AP so the heal doesn't do much, and the armor buff (which got nerfed) won't do much against that Blitz ult. What's she supposed to do if Alistar nails her with a Headbutt+Pulverize combo? She can't even stack up her Starcall stacks that well anymore so Kog's abilities will hit harder since they only last for 5 seconds now instead of 8.

So I guess that's why we hate support nerfs so much: they make our abilities less satisfying, and we have no ways available to us in game to compensate for that.